wrong-view clinging: such as eternalism (e.g., "The world and self are eternal") or nihilism.[5]

rites-and-rituals clinging: believing that rites alone could directly lead to liberation, typified in the texts by the rites and rituals of "ox practice" and "dog practice."[6]

self-doctrine clinging: self-identification with self-less entities (e.g, illustrated by MN 44[1], and further discussed in the skandha and anatta articles).

According to Buddhaghosa[7], the above ordering of the four types of clinging is in terms of decreasing grossness, that is, from the most obvious (grossest) type of clinging (sense-pleasure clinging) to the subtlest (self-doctrine clinging).

In terms of consciously knowable mental experiences, the Abhidhamma identifies sense-pleasure clinging with the mental factor of "greed" (lobha) and the other three types of clinging (self-doctrine, wrong-view and rites-and-rituals clinging) with the mental factor of "wrong view" (ditthi).[9] Thus, experientially, clinging can be known through the Abhidhamma's four-fold definitions of these mental factors as indicated in the following table[10]:

characteristic

function

manifestation

proximate cause

greed (lobha)

grasping an object

sticks, like hot-pan meat

not giving up

enjoying things of bondage

wrong view (ditthi)

unwise interpreting

presumes

wrong belief

not hearing the Dhamma

To distinguish craving from clinging, Buddhaghosa uses the following metaphor[11]:

"Craving is the aspiring to an object that one has not yet reached, like a thief's stretching out his hand in the dark; clinging is the grasping of an object that one has reached, like the thief's grasping his objective.... [T]hey are the roots of the suffering due to seeking and guarding."

Thus, for instance, when the Buddha talks about the "aggregates of clinging," he is referring to our grasping and guarding physical, mental and conscious experiences that we falsely believe we are or possess.

In the Four Noble Truths, the First Noble Truth identifies clinging (upādāna, in terms of "the aggregates of clinging") as one of the core experiences of suffering. The Second Noble Truth identifies craving (tanha) as the basis for suffering. In this manner a causal relationship between craving and clinging is found in the Buddha's most fundamental teaching.[12]

Professor Richard F. Gombrich has pointed out in several publications, and in his recent Numata Visiting Professor Lectures at the London University, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), that the literal meaning of upādāna is "fuel". He uses this to link the term to the Buddha's use of fire as a metaphor. In the so-called Fire Sermon (Āditta-pariyāya) [Vin I, 34-5) the Buddha tells the bhikkhus that everything is on fire. By everything he tells them he means the five senses plus the mind, their objects, and the operations and feelings they give rise to - ie everything means the totality of experience. All these are burning with the fires of greed, hatred and delusion.

In the nidana chain, then, craving creates fuel for continued burning or becoming (bhava). The mind like fire, seeks out more fuel to sustain it, in the case of the mind this is sense experience, hence the emphasis the Buddha places on "guarding the gates of the senses". By not being caught up in the senses (appamāda) we can be liberated from greed, hatred and delusion. This liberation is also expressed using the fire metaphor when it is termed nibbāna (Sanskrit: Nirvāṇa) which means to "go out", or literally to "blow out". The verb vā is intransitive so no agent is required.

Probably by the time the canon was written down (1st Century BCE), and certainly when Buddhaghosa was writing his commentaries (4th Century CE) the sense of the metaphor appears to have been lost, and upādāna comes to mean simply "clinging" as above. By the time of the Mahayana the term fire was dropped altogether and greed, hatred and delusion are known as the "three poisons".

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↑Examples of references to upadana in the Sutta Pitaka can be found in the "Culasihanada Sutta" ("Shorter Discourse on the Lion's Roar," MN 11) (see Nanamoli & Bodhi, 2001, p. 161) and the "Nidanasamyutta" ("Connected Discourses on Causation," SN 12) (see Bodhi, 2000b, p. 535).

↑In the Abhidhamma, the Dhammasangani §§ 1213-17 (Rhys Davids, undated, pp. 323-5) contains definitions of the four types of clinging.

↑Abhidhamma commentaries related to the four types of clining can be found, for example, in the Abhidhammattha-sangaha (see Bodhi, 2000b, p. 726 n. 5) and the Visuddhimagga (Buddhaghosa, 1999, pp. 585-7).

↑It is worth noting that, in reference to "wrong view" (Pali: miccha ditthi) as used in various suttas in the Anguttara Nikaya's first chapter, Bodhi (2005), p. 437, n. 10, states that wrong views "deny the foundations of morality, especially those views that reject a principal of moral causation or the efficacy of volitional effort."